


Up the Water Spout

by LithiumRian



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, I'm Bad At Tagging, Kid Fic, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parent Maria Hill, Parent Natasha Romanov, Slow To Update, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28827708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LithiumRian/pseuds/LithiumRian
Summary: And yet somehow none of them could have possibly imagined what they are seeing behind the door. It was impossible. But yet here he is, all dark hair and wide blue eyes shoved against the back wall, waiting for them to make the first move.orRomanoff and Barton brought home a stray baby assassin and now BlackHill have to raise him.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Laura Barton, Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 28
Kudos: 111





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First time poster, long time writer. Title is subject to change because I kind of hate it right now.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Romanoff and Barton go to Russia and find a baby assassin.

**January 2009, Barnaul, Russia**

One day, someday soon, Natasha Romanoff is going to put a note in her file that says she isn’t allowed to take missions in places that begin with the letter B. Every mission she’s ever taken to a city or country beginning with that letter has gone extremely wrong. Brazil, Bariloche, Bologna, Barcelona, Budapest, and now Barnaul.

Normally she wouldn’t accept a mission to Russia, much less one that sees her in such a large city in the middle of winter. But this is more important than her hatred for both Russia and the cold.

This is about the Red Room and the new facility that has popped up SHIELD’s radar.

“Coulson, the main building seems abandoned but we’re splitting up to check for. Well I’m not exactly sure what we’re checking for but if we find something I’ll let you know,” At least she has Clint with her, right?

“Eyes and ears open, you two.” On a normal day, on a normal mission, the idea that she isn’t always on high alert would offend her. But on this mission, today, she just has to appreciate how well Coulson knows her.

Splitting off from Barton, Natasha can’t help but notice the similarities this Red Room facility shares with the one she grew up in.

A classroom, with a projector where they studied. An operating room where girls underwent the graduation ceremony, at the end of a long dark hallway. A studio where girls would dance until they broke, or until they realized they were made of marble. And the hole, a room three feet by three feet, where girls would be sent for daring to do anything that wasn’t severe enough to get them killed.

A locked hole. 

A locked hole that has noises coming from it. 

Wait what?

Just as she goes to break the lock on the door, Clint’s voice crackles through her earpiece, “You find anything yet Widow, because I’ve seen enough dead kids to last me a lifetime.”

“Yea, I think I did,” she responds. “Down the left hallway, first right, third left, second right, first right, and then you should see me.”

While waiting for Clint, Natasha took stock of her surroundings one more time. At the near end of the hallway she’s in, is another hall that presumably leads to a different part of the building. The far end holds a glass sliding door that leads to the courtyard. But before she has an opportunity to investigate any further Clint appears.

“Hey. I found the file room and downloaded every that was on the main computer.”

“Great. Help me open this door.”

As they try to force the door off of its hinges, the whimpers begin to get louder and more distinct, confirming what Nat already knew to be true: there is a child behind this door.

“Fuck, is that a kid,” at least she could always count on Coulson and Clint to say exactly what she’s thinking.

And yet somehow none of them could have possibly imagined what they are seeing behind the door. It was impossible. But yet here he is, all dark hair and wide blue eyes shoved against the back wall, waiting for them to make the first move.

Underneath the layer of dirt that covers him, all Natasha can see is that he’s small, smaller than she ever remembers being. There’s no way he’s older than 10. Which means he’s probably going to say he’s around 13, just like she was trained to do.

He’s young though. Young enough that eventually, he will be the one to break to their impromptu staring contest.

 **“** **Кто Вы?”** All children are the same, they lack self-control and he is young enough that it hasn’t been beaten out of him yet. In fact, it may be the reason he was locked in the hole in the first place.

**“Меня зовут Наташа. Его зовут Клинт. И вы?”**

**“Чаще всего меня зовут Мальчик, но иногда меня зовут Михаил.** And I speak English.” Ignoring the fact that the boy just told her his name used to be Boy, Natasha internally laughs at the fact that the kid was probably named after Gorbachev or someone equally Soviet.

She does have to figure out what to do with him though because there’s no doubt in her mind that no one at SHIELD would be happy if she put a bullet in his head despite the threat he potentially poses.

Before she can fully form a plan however Clint speaks up, “Nat, we’ve gotta move this along, we’re on a time crunch.”

“His file.” Seems like the best course of action. If Barton can pick up stray Russian assassins, who’s to say she can’t as well.

“What?”

“Go see if you can find his file, Barton.”

“I can’t read Russian, Tash,” his complaint is cut off as Romanoff pulls a pen from who knows where and writes two words on his arm: **Мальчик** and **Михаил.**

“It should be under one of those names.”

“Alright. You’ve got this handled Nat, I believe in you,” Clint makes it halfway down the hall before Nat realizes that somehow he has managed to make it so that she is the one who has to explain the situation to the child. 

“Listen, Mikhail,” talking to children had never been her strong suit and this is a perfect example. “You can either stay here and die, try to fight me and die trying or you can come with us and live free of everything the Red Room tried to make you into.”

Just as he goes to answer, gunfire sounds from the front of the building.

“Looks like someone decided to make your choice for you,” throwing Mikhail over her shoulder she begins to run towards the exit she spotted earlier. “Hawkeye we’ve gotta get outta here. NOW!”

All she can hear over her earpiece is Clint screaming and Coulson telling him to stop screaming and get to the fucking extraction point.

But the one thing she can hear above all that is the kid cursing at her. Obviously, this kid has had the same language training she did because it’s impressive the number of languages he’s using.

“Fucking fine,” Putting the boy back on his feet, she hands him one of her pistols. “If you decide to shoot me, you better not miss because I won’t.”

All she gets in response is a couple more curse words followed by the boy positioning himself to watch her back.

The next thing she knows Clint is running down the hall towards them being chased by 15 heavily armed and armored men, effectively cutting off their planned exit. Before she has time to properly think, the boy, Mikhail, she reminds herself, has fired six shots into the necks of the men. Which effectively stuns everyone in the hall.

“Follow me. There’s another exit this way,” two more shots are fired in the direction of the men before Mikhail turns and runs.

A quick glance at Clint sees him loosing arrows and returning the questioning glance she’s giving him while slowly backing up.

There are three likely outcomes from the situation they’re in right now. One, they follow the boy directly into a trap. Two, they don’t follow the kid and not only lose him to whoever these guys are but also have to face these guys two on however many there are. Or option 3, they follow the boy and deal with the consequences later.

On any other day, on any other mission, the obvious choice would be option 2. But this is not any other day and this is not any other mission. So option 3 it is.

The boy leads them to the kitchen, where he immediately begins trying to block off the door they came through which happens to be the only obvious exit.

In a move that has her wondering if he can read minds the boy speaks up, “There’s another exit, I just need help blocking this one off first.”

Whatever adrenaline he had from their brief firefight, if it could be called that, with the goons has clearly worn off because he’s straining to push a large freezer but it seems like he’s only managing to successfully turn his face red.

“You know we’re putting a lot of trust in you right kid,” Clint says, moving to help him.

“Yes, well I don’t want to die in here either.”

Freezer in front of the door, Natasha realizes that the boy hadn’t truly been trying to block the door but trying to reveal the other exit. In the space where the freezer once stood is a hole in the wall that leads only god knows where.

“You guys are going to want to get in there now. It leads to a clearing in the forest outside, about three kilometers away.”

Even though she can hear Clint relaying the information to Coulson and Bobbi, who’s flying their extraction quinjet, she can’t help but stand and study the boy.

Despite looking like he was moments away from collapsing, the kid didn’t stop moving, beginning to turn on every appliance in the room, including the gas stove, before rummaging through cabinets. 

Clint clearly doesn’t support this very obvious plan to blow the building up and deals with it the way he always does by shouting.

“You’re going to get us blown to hell, what are you doing?!”

“I’m trying to blow this place to hell as you so elegantly put it. You won't get caught in the blast if you get in the hole,” there’s a small sound of success as he pulls out a seemingly random aerosol can. “It’s going to take roughly 15 seconds for this to explode in the microwave.”

From that moment everything seems to kick into gear. There’s a pounding on the door, and through the small window, Nat can see two of the goons shouting for help while trying to break it down.

“Now would be an excellent time to get moving. No matter what happens, do not turn around!”

That’s all it takes for Clint to shove her into the tunnel, crawling in behind her. 

She’s barely 10 feet down the tunnel and the sounds from the kitchen behind her are muffled but she can clearly make out what happens next.

Gunshots and glass breaking. A scream much too deep to belong to the boy followed by one that was clearly his.

“Nat, we should,” She cuts him off before he has a chance to finish the thought.

“If we turn back we’re as good as dead, Barton,” a part of her wishes they could turn around. “What were we going to do if we got him out of here alive? Take him home?”

“That’s what I did last time I found a baby assassin in Russia.”

She doesn’t bother to dignify this with a response, especially with the one he wants. It's a never-ending argument of theirs, all stemming from the fact that Barton is a couple of years older than her and decided not to kill her when they first met.

10 minutes pass before the explosion happens, and even though she is more than halfway down the tunnel the heat makes it seem as though she is much closer to the source.

“Do you think the kid made it out,” Clint asks.

“We’re too far to hear anything besides the explosion,” is her response.

When they do finally make it out, Morse is standing on the ramp of the quinjet waiting for them.

“You guys have anything to do with the explosion I saw while trying to land earlier,” she asks.

“It was the kid I mentioned. We don’t know if he made it out,” Clint says looking back at the exit. “We should wait a few minutes, just to be sure.”

“Five minutes nothing more.”

Exactly 3 minutes later, she spots the kid, covered in soot, stumbling out of the tunnel.

He, however, pretends not to spot them as he takes 5 steps in the opposite direction before collapsing in the snow.

Barton, the absolute softie, takes this in stride and is running towards the kid, shouting, as he begins to fall, “Bobbi, grab the medkit. Nat, prepare for take-off.”

Sharing a glance with Morse, she instantly knows that both of them are only taking orders from Barton because the situation calls for it. 

So, albeit reluctantly, they move. 

From where she’s sitting in the pilot's seat, Natasha can hear Morse, who is not a medical doctor, grumbling as she looks through the only to gasp in surprise as, presumably, Clint carries the kid on board.

A few minutes later, Clint slides into the co-pilot’s seat next to her, “Bob says she’ll be able to keep him stable until we reach the Hub. They’re all strapped down back there and ready for take off.”

She doesn’t respond, just begins flipping the last of the switches necessary to propel the quinjet into the air.

For the most part, the first ten minutes of the flight are peaceful. Clint had long since given up on trying to get her to let him play his music and Bobbi works quietly in the back doing what she can. Eventually, the silence is broken by the on board comm system rattling to life.

“STRIKE Team Delta, this is Commander Hill requesting ETA,” a small part of Natasha is happy to hear Hill’s voice coming through the comms but a much much larger part knows that this means that they’re in for a world of trouble when they land.

“ETA three hours 10 minutes to the Hub. Requesting medical assistance for an extra passenger upon arrival.” Barton, bless his heart, is trying to soften the blow of the punishment they are bound to receive upon arrival but that entire second sentence has probably sent the Hub into a state of panic.

“What do you mean by ‘an extra passenger,’ Barton?”

“Commander, if you didn’t want me to pick up strays you would stop sending me to Russia.”

“We’ll talk about this when you land,” great more trouble.

**6 am, Fury’s Office, The Hub**

Maria Hill is exhausted.

Scratch that. She is beyond exhausted, exhausted doesn’t even begin to cover the level of exhaustion she’s experiencing right now.

Currently, she’s in a meeting with the entirety of STRIKE Team Delta, their handler Phil Coulson, and her boss Nick Fury. Which would be terrible at any other time, but is especially terrible at 6 am.

All because her soulmate decided that it would be a _great_ idea to bring home a stray. Unfortunately, Fury will not hear her complaints that the STRIKE teams are more trouble than they’re worth.

“From this moment on, knowledge of the boy’s existence is Level 7, classified need to know information. Everything in his SHIELD file will be classified Level 10, Omega, redacted. The only unredacted information will be his alias, year of birth, and his status as a protected witness,” For what definitely isn’t the first time and what definitely won’t be the last, Maria is struck with the realization that her boss is insane.

Before she could mention this though, Bobbi Morse speaks up, “Um, sir. I’m only a level 6.”

“You’re gonna need a new clearance badge Morse.” Everyone in the room looks confused, but no one more so than Bobbi herself, if Hill remembers correctly she had just been promoted to Level 6 within the last year. But Fury presses on, “Next order of business is giving the kid an alias. Any suggestions?”

Silence.

“Sir, I don’t think any of us actually know what’s going on right now,” Coulson says. Finally.

“This meeting is what happens when you three,” he motions towards Romanoff, Morse, and Barton, “decide to bring home strays. Now we have to figure out what to do with the boy.”

Romanoff cuts him off before he can continue, “He said his name was Mikhail.”

“Doesn’t matter what his name is because unless we can keep him away from the Red Room, in a couple of years we will have an even bigger problem on our hands. Now suggestions for an alias please.”

“Barton has apparently taken to calling him the junior black widow,” Coulson says laughing at the look on Romanoff’s face.

“If we shorten it to just Junior, no one will think twice about it,” Barton adds. “Plus then Nat can’t try to kill me because no one will know.”

“Everyone in this room will know, Clint. That’s a good enough reason for me.”

“Nickname or not, SHIELD can’t just keep a child, Fury. What are we going to do, throw him in the Fridge,” It appears that, just like always, Maria will have to act as the voice of reason here.

“Of course not. But you and Romanoff can.”

“I’m sorry, what,” Maria has to place a hand on Natasha’s shoulder to stop her from shooting to her feet.

“Romanoff, you and Hill are the only mated pair in this room. Barton already has an infant and a toddler. I wouldn’t trust Morse to raise a kid on her own, no offense.” The look on her face says that offense has definitely been taken. “And finally, Coulson is already looking after three overgrown children.”

“What are you trying to say, sir,” The feeling of dread that comes when dealing with the outcome of STRIKE Team Delta’s missions is back and that’s never a good sign. And with the way things have been going today, it’s only going to get worse.

“Congratulations, you two. It’s a boy!” Fury laughs. “I know he’s a bit older than you were expecting for your first one but he comes fully loaded with multiple languages and the ability to use a toilet.”

Every word out of Fury’s mouth so far has managed to increase the pounding in Maria’s head that has been there since she woke up yesterday.

“Yea and the ability to take down several grown men.” The neverending smartass comments from Natasha aren’t helping either.

It's obvious that Fury chooses to ignore that comment as he rolls his eye and pushes on, “Moving on. Barton, you’ll be overseeing his deprogramming. Morse, make sure that he doesn’t accidentally kill him. Coulson, there’s a lot of paperwork involved so I’d get started if I were you, this is a list of things that we’re gonna need. The three of you are dismissed.”

As the three of them begin to leave all Maria can think about is the fact that she is now considered the guardian of a baby assassin. Appropriately aged assassins she can deal with all day, it is quite literally her job. 

This is different though. Not only is she being tasked with making sure the kid doesn’t kill anyone, but she also has to make sure he grows into a functioning adult. She has to be a parent which isn’t something she ever planned on being. How Fury thinks she and Nat are the best options for this is beyond her.

She and Natasha had talked about it in the past and it had been a pretty mutual decision. Nat couldn’t have kids and didn’t want to subject them to being related to the Black Widow. While Maria didn’t really want kids for the fear she’d be just as shit at the family thing as her biological family was. 

Despite her internal panic, she can hear Romanoff asking Fury if it wouldn’t be a better option to give the kid to an actual foster family or something. She doesn’t need to hear his answer to know what he says: no.

If it was any other child, that would be perfect but this kid is dangerous without the trauma that the foster system could inflict on him. Add in the unknown abilities listed in his file, it’s a potentially volatile situation.

Fury’s voice is what snaps her back to reality, “Hill, have you been listening to anything I’ve said in the past five minutes.”

The answer must be obvious on her face.

“I have suggested to Romanov that you buy a house in either Brighton Beach or Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn. No one in that area will bat an eye at seeing a new kid with a Russian accent,” he says. “It’s close enough to the city that you will be able to maintain your position at headquarters but far enough that the chances of running into any agents are slim.”

“I pointed out that we really like my apartment in Little Ukraine,” Natasha adds unhelpfully.

“Nat, your apartment in Little Ukraine has one bedroom,” Maria says. “I don’t know anything about raising kids but I do know that at his age they’re supposed to have their own space.”

“I suggest you guys start house hunting. Dismissed.”

From the moment they stand up to the moment they’re secure in Maria’s office they’re completely silent.

Both of them sit, waiting for the other to make the first move, to say literally anything.

“How long have you been awake.” Natasha breaks the silence asking a question only a soulmate would think to ask in a situation like this.

“I believe I’m approaching hour 26.”

“Cmere.” On a normal day, Maria wouldn’t be caught dead sitting on Nat’s lap in her office but normal flew out the window roughly six hours ago when she got the report that Delta was on their way back with an extra passenger.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha’s voice is muffled by the way she’s pressing her face into Maria’s shoulder. “Clint said the girls looked like they had been dead for a few days. Who knows how long he had been in the hole.”

“I’m not mad at you, Natasha.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” Maria can’t help but chuckle at the way Natasha always manages to both conceal and convey her emotions with a single word. “I could never be mad at you for doing what you feel is right, especially when a child is involved.”

Nat just hums into her shoulder, and Maria is more than content to sit in the comfortable silence until one of them figures out what, if anything, needs to be said.

“You know what,” Romanoff starts, “I think everything's gonna be fine.”

Despite everything that still had to be worked out, she’s inclined to believe her. 

Everything would be fine. 

Eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: I did the math and the time it would take a quinjet traveling at Mach 2.1 from Barnaul, Russia to the arbitrary location I chose for the Hub is exactly 3 hours and 21 minutes.
> 
> Leave a comment if you liked it. Or if you hated it. Either works for me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikhail begins his deprogramming, has flashbacks of important life moments and learns he has a nickname.

**10 am that same day, The Hub**

The first thing Mikhail notices upon waking up is the handcuffs. After spending roughly three weeks in the hole, it’s almost a comfort to see the silver metal gleaming around his wrist.

Despite the IVs attached to both his arms, the electrodes covering his body, and the restraint chair he’s in, it doesn’t escape his notice that the room he’s in looks nothing like your usual torture chamber.

In fact, it more closely resembles the interrogation room from a cop show he had seen while on a mission before.

A large glass window covers most of the wall directly in front of him, and if watching that show taught him there are definitely people behind it.

To his left is a door, presumably leading to the rest of this facility where he’s being held. If the people holding him know anything about who he is, then there is definitely more than one person behind it.

He doesn’t remember much about how he got here, something about a red-haired woman, a blond man, and an explosion. But he has a foolproof plan to speed this along and it’s never failed him before, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10...”

“300.” 5 minutes. “301, 302, 303..”

“1200.” 20 minutes, the longer he counts the louder he gets. “1201, 1202, 1203…”

“2700.” 45 minutes. “2701, 2702, 2703…”

“4500.” 1 hour 15 minutes. “4501, 4502, 4503…”

“4701, 4702, 4703, 4704, 4705,” the door opens. “4706.”

“You can stop doing that now,” the blond man from before, Clint, walks in with a woman he doesn’t recognize. “Do you know where you are?”

The girls at the Red Room are taught to stay quiet and bat their eyelashes. Not him, he’s nowhere near that subtle.

Not that they didn’t try to teach him something similar, but eventually they realized that not only would that method not work for very long, but it also wouldn’t work on very many people once he reached a certain age. No one wants a grown man batting his eyelashes at them.

So he had to come up with his own method, observe: “I’m not sure it matters where I am. It is incredibly obvious that I will not be leaving this room the same as I was carted into it. The real question is whether or not I’m leaving alive.”

The twin looks of shock on their faces was definitely worth it. The woman shook her shock off quicker and mumbled something to the man about “not having all day Barton” before leaving the room. Step 1 complete: decrease the number of people between you and the door as much as possible.

“We are not going to kill you,” Clint says, taking a seat in the lone metal chair in front of me. “You’re a kid, SHIELD doesn’t kill kids.”

“I am not a kid.”

“Your soul mark hasn’t even come in yet.”

“Disciples of the Red Room do not have soul marks.”

“Disciples of the Red Room don’t have soul marks because you’re children.” Step 2: Get them to tell you something did not know. “No one in recorded history has ever gotten their mark before the age of 12. They come with puberty which usually means boys get theirs a little later than girls but you are definitely too young to have one.” Interesting.

“If you truly mean me no harm then why am I locked up,” Step 3: figure out their plan so that you can figure out yours.

“Here’s the thing, Junior, what the Red Room did to you and those girls. It wasn’t right and this machine is going to help you understand that,” Clint gestures to the machine slightly off to the right of the restraint chair. “I’m not going to lie to you, it will hurt. But afterwards, we’ll be able to make sure you grow up like a normal kid should.”

“I am afraid I do not understand what you mean,” Mikhail says. Currently, the first half of step 3 was only serving to confuse him but it's best to stick with it.

Before Clint has a chance to answer a voice comes over a speaker, “Barton, if we could get this show on the road, that would be lovely.”

For his part, Barton just rolls his eyes and looks Mikhail right in the eyes, “I don’t know how to explain what’s going to happen, I’ve never been hooked up to this particular machine. I’m just here to make sure it goes as smoothly as possible.” 

“Am I being used as some sort of science rat,” Mikhail swears that this guy just told him that they aren’t going to kill him.

“No. Natasha, the redhead, from yester-today was hooked up to this machine when she defected from the Red Room too.” While not officially part of the plan, Mikhail knows this little tidbit of information will be useful in the not so distant future so he files it away for now. “Are you ready to begin?”

“It is not as though I have a choice, so we should get it over with.”

“Good luck Junior. Really sorry about this.”

The second Clint presses the button it is as though all the pain Mikhail has ever felt in his life has returned to his body tenfold. He tries really hard not to but ultimately he can’t help it, he screams.

That's when the flashbacks start.

_4 and a half years ago, Red Room Training Facility_

When the Madame had woken them up that morning she had said, “It’s time to start thinning the herd.”

Most days he had been kept separate from the other children that lived there, usually only seeing them in the mornings before training or at night when everyone was locked to their beds. Occasionally, he saw them during certain training exercises but more often than not it was just him and Konstantin.

Konstantin had been his main instructor, never more than a shout away.

His first hint should’ve been that Konstantin was nowhere to be seen and when he asked the Madame she just said that Konstantin had more important things to do than watch over him all day every day. Which seemed weird because it had literally been his job.

But besides him joining the girls in all of their lessons, the day had progressed fairly normally, until just after dinner.

The Madame had led them beyond the courtyard, uncharted territory as far as they were all concerned, having never seen beyond the facility. Then they had been given guns, real ones not the ones they used in training.

As they stood there in the line waiting, all of them smaller than he even remembers being, they were told why they were standing there in the dark.

“Survive the night,” that’s all she had said before counting down and releasing them one by one into the wilderness.

When he was finally released, he moved with more caution than everyone else had. They had all rushed off, into the unknown, without actually examining where they were first. He didn’t know what was waiting for him out there, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.

So he had done the smart thing, he turned around and walked back the way they came until the compound was in his sights.

He had been much too small to climb any of the trees, but there were bushes nearby so he hid.

It had worked. Clearly, they hadn’t been expecting anyone to return to the area around the compound, so outside of the occasional wild rabbit or fox, nothing approached his hiding spot.

As the first rays of light had begun to peek through the trees, he traveled back to where the Madame had left them.

When reached both the Madame and Konstantin had been waiting for him, with looks that clearly meant he was in trouble.

He hadn’t been able to figure out why then and he still can’t now. 

He had been instructed to survive the night. The Madame hadn’t given them clear instructions on where or how she wanted them to survive the night. Konstantin hadn’t been around so that he could ask for clarification.

In the end, though none of this mattered, Konstantin’s grip on his shoulder had made that abundantly clear.

It’s the first time he remembers being in the hole but just because it's his first memory of it doesn’t mean it was the first time it had happened.

_4 years ago, Red Room Testing Facility_

When he had woken up that day, he hadn’t been in the dormitory. He hadn’t been in the hole either.

He was strapped to a metal table with so many cords and tubes attached to him that he couldn’t tell which ones led where.

That’s when he had heard the voice, it was loud like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“Good. You’re awake,” it was definitely a man but it wasn’t Konstantin or any of the other instructors. “The serum didn’t kill you, a wonderful sign. It means we can move on to the next phase of testing.”

“What’s,” his mouth had been so dry. “Water. Can I have some water?”

He hadn’t gotten a response, but the door had opened. Three scientists walked in and began unplugging him.

Everything after that had moved so quickly until it hadn’t.

One moment he had been hooked up to a treadmill and the next he was strapped to the table again.

Lying on his stomach he hadn’t been able to feel anything below his waist or move at all, but he could hear them. And the machines.

“Sir, are you sure we should take it this far?”

“Yes,” it was the loud voice except for this time it had been much closer. He had been in the room. “If he can regrow the bone, we will have succeeded.”

“He’s a child.”

“There are no children in the Red Room,” the man with the loud voice had sounded so angry. “We will remove the bone, if it grows back we are a step closer. If not, we leave him to die and begin again.”

Unfortunately, whatever had been keeping the pain away wore off then and he could feel it. First the air on his bones, then the bone saw.

The worst pain of his life.

He can’t remember how long the testing had lasted after that, floating in and out of consciousness. The pain was too much for him to handle.

But the last time he woke up both the room and his body were covered in blood. 

He was huddled in the corner surrounded by bodies. Scientists and foot soldiers, lay around him, all of their bodies brutalized in different ways.

That’s when Konstantin appeared in the doorway.

This was the moment when Mikhail had finally realized that Konstantin had been in charge of him the same way the Madame had been in charge of the girls. Or at the very least in charge of his punishments.

Konstantin had only ever appeared when it was time for training or to carry him to the hole.

When he appeared this time he didn’t speak, just took a rag and wiped away most of the blood before picking him up.

Mikhail had tried to fight him, of course. He always tried to fight him, but Konstantin would just grab him by the back of his shirt and take him back.

Back to the hole.

Every time. Back to the hole.

Again and again.

_2 years ago, Białystok, Poland_

Before this moment, Mikhail didn’t remember much about his first solo mission. Only that the rest of the trainees had been jealous and that when he came back the Madame actually said she was impressed by him.

But he remembers now and is wishing he doesn’t.

Konstantin had said he was going to Poland. Białystok. He hadn’t said why but it didn’t matter to him. He had been so so excited because he was going to be the first one to leave the facility and he didn’t even have a proper name. Just **Мальчик,** occasionally **в Мальчик.**

The boy.

He was just the boy.

When Konstantin dropped him off in Białystok, he just handed him a folder with information on his target and said, “If you’re not at the train station in Barnaul in 9 days, we will send someone to kill you.”

This should have been terrifying but Konstantin was the least frightening instructor of the Red Room, to him at least, so Mikhail just laughed and walked away.

His target had been a low-level politician, Bogdan Janowski. The file didn’t say much, it actually didn’t say anything, it just held two pictures. One of Janowski and the other of a nearby church.

Seemed easy enough: go to the church, find the man, follow him home, kill him. In theory, it was a relatively simple mission. 

And it had been pretty easy in practice too, except for the part where he had gotten into a sword fight with Janowski.

After that, he had seven days to get back to Barnaul.

The first day had been spent on a cargo train that got him all the way to Moscow.

Unfortunately, the rest of the journey had been much harder. Not many people were willing to pick up a hitch-hiking child much less one trying to get to Siberia.

On days two through four, Mikhail had done a lot of walking and a lot of hiding in the trunks of people's cars. Not a pleasant experience. He had barely managed to make it across the Urals and into Yekaterinburg. 

The remaining days had gone much like days two through four. When walking he tried to stay close to the main roads, because he knew that getting lost in the taiga, the snowy forest of the region, would be worse than anything else he’s been through.

Luckily, he passed through enough small villages and towns that he didn’t have to worry too much about the bears or wolves.

By the time he made it to the train station in Barnaul on the seventh day of traveling, the ninth day of the mission, he had no energy to do anything but pass out on a bench outside of the main entrance.

Mikhail woke up to Konstantin standing over him with a look on his face that made him look constipated.

The ride back to the facility had been filled by Konstantin yelling at him about how having a sword fight wasn’t discreet and they had given him a gun for a reason. And blah blah blah.

Mikhail had never understood the point of yelling about something after it had already been done, And when he had told Konstantin as much, he had just sighed and stated the obvious.

He was headed back to the hole.

At least he had gotten to watch Konstantin put a mark underneath **Мальчик** on the confirmed kills board.

_3 weeks ago, Red Room Training Facility_

They had been doing it again, thinning the herd, but it was different this time.

The Madame had called it a reverse tournament. The girls who lost would continue fighting until the biggest loser had been determined. She hadn’t said what would happen then but Mikhail knew it wasn’t going to be good because she had him sit on the side waiting.

Mikhail watched with bated breath, internally rooting against certain girls.

It took them all day but eventually, 16 becomes 8 becomes 4 becomes 2 becomes 1.

Ksenia had lost all of her fights and was laying at the center of the circle in the middle of the courtyard, bloody and bruised.

When the Madame calls for him he finally understands why he had been told to bring his favorite knife.

But Ksenia had always been his favorite and as he watched the Madame yell at her to stand up, he realized he was going to have to kill her.

As he approached the girls widened the circle to give him the same wide berth he had been getting since the procedure 2 years prior. Ksenia had never backed away when he approached.

Of all the girls in the Red Room, Mikhail thought that Ksenia was the most like him. Even from the very generic personalities they had been allowed to display within the facility, hers had always meshed with his own the best. Even their fighting styles complimented each other.

Standing there, across from her, at the center of that circle had made him wish that they hated each other. Maybe it would have made it easier.

It didn’t matter now.

Fighting Ksenia had felt like trying to fight himself. She had known every move he was going to make and vice versa. But she was already tired from fighting all day and ultimately that was her downfall.

She dodged too far to her left and was too slow in righting herself. It gave him the opportunity to slip behind her and put his knife to her throat.

But he had hesitated and the Madame had begun yelling at him to finish it.

That hesitation had lasted less than a second but he had sealed both his and Ksenia’s fates.

A deep breath and a murmured apology later, he was kneeling on the ground watching the light leave her eyes.

Mikhail doesn’t remember how long he had been there, could’ve been minutes, could’ve been hours. He does remember feeling Konstantin and Danyl, who instructed them on hand to hand combat, dragging him away from her body.

They dragged him the short distance to the hole and had murmured about how he wasn’t fighting them this time. About how maybe the Madame had finally broken the unbreakable boy.

When they locked him in, he hadn’t cried.

There hadn’t been a point. Ksenia wasn’t there to laugh at him for his tears anymore.

So no, he didn’t cry.

He had just slid to the ground and waited.

_Fin_

Just as quickly as the pain had come, it left. 

Opening his eyes, Mikhail realizes he’s no longer trapped in the darkness of the hole but sitting in the restraint chair with Clint right in front of him.

“Easy there, buddy. We’re done. You won’t have to do this again. I promise,” The man is moving quickly, pulling the electrodes from his body and wiping something off of his face.

Only when Clint begins shushing him and continues to wipe his face does Mikhail realize that he’s crying. Whether from the residual pain or the grief of killing the girl he thought of as his sister, he doesn’t know but he does know he can’t stop, in fact, he cries harder.

“Here take this.” Clint’s shoving a bottle of water into his hands, when was he uncuffed? “Take a sip. Did you know you can’t drink water and cry and at the same time?”

Mikhail doesn’t think that’s correct but he takes a sip of the water anyway.

“Can I leave now? Am I finished with this task?”

“Almost. Agent Morse, the tall woman from earlier, she’s gonna come in and make sure I didn’t accidentally fry your brain or anything. She’s a doctor,” the moment he says it, she walks in.

“Hey there Junior,” This Morse woman is looking considerably less moody than before they had begun. “Despite what the bozo said I’m not an actual doctor, I’m a biologist.”

“You have a doctorate in biology, Bobbi,” Clint smirks as though he’s finally outsmarted her, meaning he probably hasn’t.

“Which means I’m qualified to draw blood and study it. I am not qualified to be wrist-deep in your organs despite what you and Nat seem to think,” She isn’t looking at Clint as she speaks, putting on gloves and prepping the needle instead. “Slight pinch.”

After everything he’s been through yester-today, seriously how long has he been here, he barely even feels Morse put the needle in.

“And done,” she says, twisting the cap on the final vial. “Clint’s supposed to take you to see the commander and Nat. Dumbo, make sure he eats something, alright?”

“Aye, aye captain.” 

The next he knows Clint’s dragging him around by the hand pointing out different parts of the building, but he hadn't been paying much attention, it was too loud. 

As they make their way around, a lot of agents walk by them but most just do a quick double-take before deciding that they want nothing to do with whatever is going on. In all fairness, Mikhail isn’t sure he wants anything to do with it either.

**Commander Hill’s Living Quarters, The Hub**

Maria is sitting at the kitchen table trying to rush the purchase of the house Fury told them to buy when she hears the door open.

“I brought the kid,” Clint’s voice rings through the apartment. “Bobbi says to make sure he eats.”

“Have you ever learned to knock Barton?”

“No,” he laughs.

“I’m in the kitchen.”

Hill’s living space isn’t very big but Clint and the Kid still have to round a corner before she’s able to see them.

As the kid stands in front of her, Hill can’t help but to think that he’s even smaller than Natasha said. He’s practically drowning in a pair of SHIELD issue sweats and he looks like a strong gust of wind could sweep him off of his feet.

“Did you hear what I said about Bobbi,” Clint asks while motioning for the boy to take a seat at the table.

“Yea, Nat’s grabbing the Chinese we ordered,” she says, moving to put her laptop away. “Junior, do you like Chinese?”

“Why does everyone keep calling me that?”

“What?”

“Everyone keeps calling me ‘Junior’,” the kid says squirming in his seat. “Clint called me that twice. Morse said it before she started drawing my blood. And now you. Why does everyone keep calling me that?”

“That’s a conversation that can wait until we start eating.” Natasha’s back. Thank god. Maria has no idea how she’s supposed to explain what’s going on. “Do you want orange chicken or beef and broccoli?”

The first part of lunch is a mostly silent affair. Maria, Natasha, and Clint are all trying to find a way to explain what’s going on. And Mikhail, well, he’s very very focused on trying to separate his food so that the broccoli isn’t touching the beef isn’t touching the chicken isn’t touching the white rice.

When Maria notices this, she can’t help but speak up, “Are you not hungry?”

“I don’t like when my food touches, doesn’t feel right,” he says. “I thought I was going to get an explanation because this seems like a very long build-up to killing me.”

A quick glance at Clint and Natasha lets Maria know that she’s going to be the one to handle it, well here goes nothing.

“No one here is going to kill you, Junior.” That’s a good place to start, right? “You’re here because our boss, Fury, thought it would be in everyone’s best interest if you lived with Natasha and I. Can’t just have a small Russian assassin on the loose.”

“That doesn’t explain why everyone keeps calling me Junior.”

“It’s just a stupid nickname Clint came up with,” Natasha says.

“It’s not a stupid nickname, ‘sides he actually looks a little bit like Maria,” Clint speaks around a mouthful of what looks like, well, everything.

“Not the point.” Maria doesn’t know how Coulson does it, it’s like herding cats with these two.

Clint swallows, “Right. The point is that we’re going to do everything we can to keep you safe, including changing your name if you want.” 

“I am not a child, I can keep myself safe,” Mikhail says. If he’s trying to convince them the pout on his face isn’t helping him very much.

“I thought we covered this bit earlier,” Clint groans.

“I have 39 confirmed kills.”

“45. The six shots to the neck in the facility,” Natasha adds very unhelpfully. 

“That’s not the point,” Maria says glaring at Nat.

“What’s the point this time?”

Herding cats.

“The point,” Maria sighs heavily. “The point is that all the things the Red Room did to you. All the things they made you do. All of it was wrong. No person should be treated that way whether they’re a child or not.”

“Oh.” Finally, progress! “I think I would like to pick my own name if that’s ok.”

“It is definitely ok.”

The rest of lunch passes much like the beginning and Mikhail finally begins to eat once his food has been successfully separated.

But Maria can’t help but realize that she’s going to be having a lot of conversations like this in the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: This chapter is brought to you by seasons 4 and 5 of Doctor Who.
> 
> Also updates are going to get really really slow because my semester starts on Wednesday the 27th and college is hard. I'm going to shoot for an update every 2 or 3 weeks but no promises.
> 
> Another also, should I make a side tumblr to communicate with you all easier? Lemme know.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikhail gets a new name, Maria and Nat are cute, and NewNameMikhail is afraid of something.

**Noon, The Next Day, Commander Hill’s Living Quarters, The Hub**

Mikhail’s eyes are beginning to hurt.

He’s been sitting here, locked in a staring contest with the Black Widow, Natalia the defector, for roughly two and a half hours. (He supposes he’s a defector now too because it’s unlikely that the Red Room will take him back after he blew up the compound, but that's not the point.)

The Commander left that amount of time ago to deal with an issue elsewhere on the base and told the defector to watch him and apparently she chose to take that literally.

There’s a knock at the door that nearly startles him out of his focus. 

“It’s open,” Natasha shouts, not breaking eye contact. That’s fine, Mikhail can keep this up all day.

The approaching footsteps are heavy, obviously belonging to a man that isn’t Barton, whose footsteps are so light no one ever hears him coming. All of his instincts are telling him to analyze this potential new threat but he also doesn’t want to lose this unofficial contest so he compromises with himself to sit very stiffly instead of looking away.

“I wish I could say that I come bearing gifts, but I don’t,” the man says, walking into the living room. “But I do have paperwork for you and Maria to fill out.”

“Set it on the table,” Natasha seems unbothered by the man’s presence in her home, so Mikhail takes it as a cue to relax slightly.

“How long have you two just been staring at each other?”

“At least two and a half hours. Maria told me to keep an eye on the крошечный мудак.” 

“The what?”

“She called me ‘tiny asshole’.” Mikhail wants to laugh at the gasp that escapes the man. “Konstantin used to call me that sometimes.”

“This is definitely not what she meant, Natasha,” even though he can’t see the man's face, it’s obvious that he’s disappointed from his tone of voice. It seems as though he’s perfected it. “She probably wanted you to ask him questions. You know, get to know him a little.”

“How do you expect me to do that.” The confusion is obvious on her face and Mikhail begins to smirk, the Red Room teaches you how to be anything besides yourself but when you need to be you how are you supposed to do that.

“You just try and find things you have in common, like the fact you were both raised by the Red Room,” the man sighs. “You wanna talk about that all?”

“No,” their denial is simultaneous. Why would anyone want to talk about what happened in the Red Room. The horrors experienced in that place should be left there.

“Look, there’s something you both agree on.” When neither of them break eye contact, the man groans and Mikhail can hear him flop into the nearest arm chair. “What if, you guys stop long enough for me to get what I need? That way I can go back to cleaning up the remaining mess from the mission.”

The way he says it makes Mikhail think that he’s fairly used to cleaning up the messes caused by Natasha and Barton. Hopefully this means that no one is really mad at him for blowing up the building.

Across from him, Natasha is still staring at him but now with her eyebrow quirked in a silent question, ‘Are you ready to stop now?’

The answer is yes. To be honest, Mikhail isn’t sure how this started but he’s pretty sure that he wasn’t the one who began the impromptu competition, so he just raises his eyebrow back at her.

This apparently is and isn’t the right answer because Romanoff just rolls her eyes at him and turns to face the man.

“Thank you,” the man sighs in relief. “Fury says that we need a proper excuse as to why we blew up a building in Russia that doesn’t involve Junior.”

Mikhail watches as Natasha stares blankly at the man. “Isn’t it your job to come up with the excuses, Coulson?”

“It actually isn’t but I can’t exactly hand this one off to the usual suspects, can I,” the man, Coulson, asks.

“No, I guess not,” Nat says.” But what does that have to do with me?”

“In order to form a good excuse I need to know exactly what happened and Barton’s hiding because he pranked Morse and she’s on the warpath.”

Based on the small laugh Natasha lets out, this is a fairly common occurrence. Natasha doesn’t seem mad that she has to do extra work because Clint made a mess and Coulson just seems exasperated that he’s going to have to clean up said mess. 

It takes them 15 minutes but eventually they come up with an excuse that they think will work.

Since the Red Room facility was in a remote location and most of the appliances were gas based, it's not unlikely that faulty equipment could have an explosion.

When Mikhail asks how they plan to explain away the heavily armed goons and dead girls, he’s told that as long as no one expects SHIELD involvement it’s not their problem.

“Alright on to the final order of business. Junior, Maria told me that you wanted to pick out a new name. Have you decided yet,” Coulson asks.

“I think I want to be called Aleksei,” he says.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Natasha smile slightly, but he isn’t sure why. But Coulson is obviously confused. 

“Why Aleksei,” he asks. “Don’t you want to choose something more American?”

“I’m not American. I’m Russian, Siberian if you want to be specific,” the newly named boy says. “So why not name myself after the greatest Siberian to ever live.”

This just earns him more confused looks, so he decides to explain.

“Aleksei Leonov was the first man to walk in space. His EVA lasted 12 minutes and nine seconds. He almost died while trying to get back into his capsule,” he says. “Then, when he and his partner, Pavel Belyayev, tried to re-enter earth’s atmosphere their capsule malfunctioned and they landed in the mountains and they had to wait two days to be rescued.”

When both of the agents freeze, Mikhail, ugh Aleksei, realizes that he’s probably said too much. This could end very badly.

“Do you like space, Junior?”

Like.

Liking things is dangerous.

In the Red Room, if instructors catch even the slightest hint that you prefer one thing over another they punish you, whether it's true or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s something small like preferring pierogies to borscht, punishment would be swift and unrelenting.

Weapons don’t have opinions or personalities. No matter what his name is, Aleksei is just a weapon.

As if she knows exactly what he’s thinking Natasha speaks up, “You’re allowed to have opinions here, Junior.” Her voice is softer than he’s ever heard it. “You won’t be punished for it. Trust me if they did punish people for having opinions, Clint and I would be out of jobs.”

“You and Clint should be out of jobs for a lot of reasons but having opinions is not one of them,” Coulson says. “Everyone has something that they like, it’s fine if space is your thing. It’s also fine if it isn’t.”

“Yea, Coulson over here still buys toys.”  
“They’re not toys, Romanoff, they’re collectors items.”

“They’re toys, Phil,” her voice is deadpan. “Anyway, our point is that it’s perfectly fine if space is something that you like. You can like as many or as few things as you want.”

While realistically, he knows that what they’re saying is true. There’s still a small voice, that sounds a lot like Konstantin if he thinks about it, whispering in his ear that weapons don’t have interests beyond completing their missions.

Obviously, he knows that he’s no longer expected to be a weapon, but there’s no way he’s going to be able to change his entire way of thinking just because a few people he barely knows tell him too.

Not this quickly.

Not after a single day and a trip in a really weird chair.

Coulson’s phone, which had been laying on the table undisturbed until this moment begins to buzz. After taking a moment to look at it he speaks up, “It looks like Morse is finally off the warpath and needs to see the kid for a couple more tests.”

“You should take him, I want to fill out these forms before Hill gets back. God only knows what type of mood she’s in after dealing with the baby agents,” Natasha says.

Coulson laughs, and Aleksei wants to laugh too but in his experience when the people in charge are in bad moods it only leads to trouble for him.

“Alright, let’s go, Junior.”

As he follows Coulson out the door, he can hear Natasha shout something about food or eating but he can’t really hear her over the noise in the hallway.

Walking through the base with Coulson is a lot calmer than walking around with Clint. Coulson seems to be fine with the fact that Aleksei doesn’t really want to talk and doesn’t try to fill the space with the sound of his own voice.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t speak at all, he does. But he keeps his rambling to minimum and doesn’t call extra attention to himself like Barton does.

All of his questions only require yes or no answers, meaning that a shake of the head is more than acceptable. 

Most of the questions are simple like, “Do you like books?” A nod.

“Alright. Do you like swimming?” A head shake.

“OK, that’s a no. What about cars?” Another nod.

“Do you have a favorite TV show?” This is answered by a look that conveys, at least he hopes it does, how stupid he thinks the question is.

It continues this way until they reach their destination.

The room Coulson takes him to isn’t anything like the rooms he’s been taken to for testing before.

There’s no huge metal table with leather straps, no items that look like medevial torture devices. There aren’t any treadmills or bench presses.

None of the stuff he’s used to is in this room. It’s all computers and microscopes and equipment he’s never seen before but that looks very expensive.

“Alright, Agent Morse, you’ve got it from here,” Coulson has his phone out again and he has a look on his face that makes it look like he’s constipated.

“Yep.” Morse looks angry, her hair has slightly blue tint to it and when he looks around the room he sees a lab coat dyed the same color. “You on your way to kill Clint for whatever he just did?”

“That’s the plan. See ya later, Junior.” And just like that Coulson’s gone.

With the room now empty besides the two of them, Bobbi begins to explain what’s going to happen, he’s struck with the realization that maybe things will be different here.

**Simultaneously, Commander Hill’s Living Quarters**

When Maria gets back to her apartment, it’s much quieter than she expects it to be.

At worst, she expected Natasha and Junior to be attempting to kill each other. And at best, she thought they would be sitting silently with the TV on as background noise.

Instead, she finds Natasha sprawled out on the couch asleep with two separate piles of paper on the table.

Normally this wouldn’t cause her too much panic but she is almost 100 percent certain that she told Natasha to watch the kid and looking around it doesn’t seem like he’s even in the apartment.

Crossing the short distance to the couch, she shakes the redhead awake.

Maria watches as Natasha wakes slowly. It took a long time but Nat no longer jumps when Maria tries to wake her.

Now she just kind of rolls over, rubs her eyes like a sleepy toddler, and mumbles about how she isn’t actually sleeping. It’s adorable.

Unfortunately, Maria currently has other things to worry about besides how cute Romanoff is when she wakes up.

“Natasha. Where’s Junior?”

When all she gets in response is a blank look she tries again. “The kid, Nat. You know, the one I told you to watch after while I was gone.”

“Oh.” Nat still has that goofy look on her face. “Coulson came by to drop off some paperwork. Then Bobbi needed the kid for more tests or something so he took him to her.”

“So did you actually sit here and fill out the forms or just take a nap?”

“I filled them out,” She says sitting up. “Junior decided he wanted to be called Aleksei. So he is officially Aleksei Mikhail Romanoff-Hill or Richardson-Hayes, depending on who you ask.”

“Anything that I need to sign?”

Nat gestures to the pile on the left, “All of those need your signature. But otherwise you are free to relax until your work phone rings again.”

“You’re a saint.”

“Masha.” If anyone found out that Natasha Romanoff, the deadly Black Widow, is a whiner, the reactions would be legendary.

“Learn to take a compliment, Romanoff.”  
“Can’t. It might make my head too big.”

“And we can’t have that now can we,” Maria laughs.

Grabbing the indicated pile, Maria reads each document before signing her name in the necessary spots.

The more she signs, the more surprised she is that Nat sat here and filled everything out. Coulson can’t even get her to fill out her mission reports half the time, although it looks like those might be in the other pile.

There are a lot of different forms. Some need her signature as Deputy Director, others as the legal guardian of a minor.The first and arguably most important form is a SHIELD Witness Protection document. 

After that they all begin to blur together. Russian birth certificate (they need to figure out how old this kid is or at least get an estimate). Russian adoption forms, Russian passport stamped by United States immigration services. Forms signifying the child was re-adopted in the state of New York. A New York birth certificate.. Certificate of Citizenship. United States passport. 

It’s seemingly never ending and those are just the ones with more than one copy because once the SHIELD WITSEC form goes through, the kid officially has two separate identities.

If it were any other kid, she’d be worried about too much pressure on them to keep this secret. But from what Natasha’s told her about the Red Room, Aleksei probably has as many as 10 other identities rattling around in his head already.

That being said, the thing she is worried about is the fact that they are essentially taking an all but brainwashed child assassin and telling him that not only is he no longer expected to be an assassin. No, that would be too simple. They also have to make sure he knows that everything he was taught is wrong. And they have to send him to public school because apparently, sending him to a private boarding school wouldn’t fit into the SHIELD budget.

Romanoff defected to SHIELD of her own violation. It’s somewhat of an open secret that she let Barton capture her.

Junior, on the other hand, didn’t really have a choice in coming to SHIELD. He still doesn’t really have a choice in what’s going on around him and it doesn’t seem like he wants one.

Even Barton’s son, Cooper, who’s not even three, is very vocal about what he does, or more accurately doesn’t, want.

Maria’s broken out of her thoughts by the feeling of a finger rubbing the space between her eyebrows.

On the other end of that finger is Romanoff, all wide green eyes staring at her like she just kicked her cat and sitting on the coffee table.

“Who just tried to kill Liho, Nat?”

“I should be asking you that,” Romanoff says, finally removing her finger from Maria’s face. “Your eyebrows were doing that cute scrunchy thing.”

“My eyebrows do not do a scrunchy thing!”

“They definitely do, it’s cute though,” she says. “You should definitely tell me what’s going on in that head of yours though.”

With a sigh that is probably a little too dramatic, Maria explains what was on her mind.

“Alright, so we give the kid more choices, simple as that.” Leave it to Natasha to make this sound way easier than it’s likely to be.

“We both know it’s not going to be that easy,” Maria says. “I asked him if he wanted pancakes this morning and he stared at me like I had an extra head.”

“You offered to make pancakes at 6 am! I thought you had grown an extra head too.” This is accompanied by a dramatic flourish and Natasha sticking her hands out to check the space on either side of Maria’s head. “But we can work on it, ease him into it.”

The conversation doesn’t last much longer after that because Natasha gets distracted as she’s prone to doing. 

**Midnight, Commander Hill’s Living Quarters**

Mikhail. Aleksei. Junior. It doesn’t really matter what his name is because right now he is scared out of his mind.

He’s supposed to be sleeping right now. Natasha and Maria had gone out of their way to make sure he was comfortable sleeping on the couch because it’s not like secret government facilities come with multi-bedroom apartments, even if you are the deputy director. Besides, he had definitely slept in worse places before.

Last night, he had been fine, far too exhausted, both physically and emotionally, to care about anything besides being able to lay down.

But he isn’t that tired tonight.

Today’s tests hadn’t required much from him, it was just Bobbi asking him stupid questions and drawing more of his blood because apparently it’s very interesting.

So tonight, he’s awake enough to be aware that the entire apartment is very, very dark. The only light he can make out from his spot is creeping in from the crack under the front door. And that’s nowhere near enough.

Fear of the dark is most common in children under the age of five, although it's not unusual to see it in children as old as seven. Past that point, well it’s just embarrassing.

What most people don’t realise is that it’s not the dark people are afraid of, it's what's hiding out in it.

Now, Aleksei is far too old to believe in things like monsters, he’s quite sure that he’s scarier than whatever kids imagine to be hiding under their beds.

The problem is that in the dark he can’t see what's coming. To him this is infinitely scarier because when a “monster” is hiding under your bed, at least you know where it is. Not knowing where an attack is coming from goes against everything he’s ever been trained for.

In the Red Room, the only place that had true darkness was the hole, and it wasn’t big enough for someone to sneak up on you. It was barely big enough for one person.

They had of course done some training in the dark but that had been in locations he was already familiar with, against people he thought were predictable.

Sitting here in this new environment, with these new people, with no chance of returning to a place he’s comfortable in. Well, it’s pretty much exactly what he imagines when someone says, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Which is why he’s sitting here, shaking, gasping for breath and with heart beating so fast he’s certain it’s going to explode out of his chest.

He’d move if he could. Would go and sit near the door where hopefully it doesn’t feel so dark. Or he’d move to sit in a corner, where he’d be able to see whatever tries to decide he's an easy target.

But his legs are numb and he feels like if he even tries to move from the couch he’ll vomit on the rug.

So he sits and he waits.

And he waits.

But it gets worse and he can feel the bile rising until it sits uncomfortably at the top of his throat.

He tries to hold it down but based on the way he finds himself rushing to the bathroom, he isn’t very successful at it.

As he’s heaving into the toilet, he can’t help but be thankful that he managed to turn on the light in the bathroom. The dark sucks, and throwing up also sucks but the only thing that sucks more than both of those things separately is throwing up in the dark.

The only saving grace in this situation is the fact that the tile on the bathroom floor is beyond cold.

He isn’t sure how long he lays there enjoying the feeling of the cool tile on his skin, but when he gets up to rinse out his mouth, Natasha is sitting on the counter by the sink.

He’s more than aware that she’s analyzing him, trying to figure what could possibly be wrong with him to the point that he didn’t notice her enter the space.

She doesn’t say anything though.

She just lets him do what he needs to and then follows him back towards the living room.

He would have been content to go back to sitting in the dark, it definitely would not have been pleasant but he could have done it. Unfortunately, Nat seems to have a different plan.

While he goes to sit on the couch, she goes into the kitchen and begins rummaging through the cabinets. 

He’s not sure what she’s doing in there but she’s not even trying to be quiet and he’s almost certain that Maria is still asleep in the bedroom.

The banging does stop eventually and a mug of tea is placed in his hands. Natasha goes and sits directly across from him, perching herself on the coffee table.A small part of him briefly wonders if they’re going to resume their staring contest from earlier.

Instead she begins to speak, “How old do you think you are?” 

This is not what he thought she was going to say.

“I don’t know,” he says. “How old do you think you are?”

“Not sure, but Maria thinks I’m roughly two years younger than her,” she responds. “I’m just asking because we need to enroll you in school, so we need to know what grade you should be in.”

On one hand, Aleksei knows what she’s talking about. 

It had been covered as part of their lessons in the Red Room. Children go to school and weapons go to training.

Conversely, he’s still confused because it doesn’t make any sense for SHIELD to take a weapon and then not use it. 

When he tells Natasha as much she just sighs and shakes her head.

“I know you still don’t believe us, but you are not a weapon, you’re a person,” she says. “You deserve the chance to try and be more than what the Red Room tried to turn you into. We’ll keep telling you that until you believe us.”

Aleksei doesn’t know if he’ll ever believe them but he doesn’t say that out loud. Instead he says, “Konstantin once said that he’s been putting up with my shit for nearly 10 years. So I think I’m almost 10 because he also said I’ve been with the Red Room my whole life.”

“Alright, I’ll have Maria add it to your file in the morning,” she says.

They don’t talk much more after that but they don’t resume their staring contest either.

Instead Natasha turns on the TV to a show he’s never seen before, turns down the volume and goes to sit in the arm chair.

It's a funny show. The main character is a teenage boy who gets sent to live with his rich family in Bel Air, which Nat says is in California. While the boy’s aunt and uncle are away for the weekend, he and his cousin’s get into mischief that has to be fixed before they get home.

Aleksei didn’t know that television could be like this, bright and funny. All of the shows they had been shown in the Red Room were either dark and depressing or showed them how much Americans hate Russians.

After a few more episodes of the same show, Natasha leaves to go back to bed but she leaves the TV on.

With her gone and the TV providing enough light to the room, Aleksei falls asleep wondering if Will let the other kid beat him in basketball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: This chapter got completely rewritten four times, which is why it took so long.
> 
> The show mentioned is Fresh Prince of Bel Air season 2 episode 11.
> 
> I want to thank my TV&Film Writing professor because I was in his class when I got the motivation to finish this off.
> 
> Also I am now on tumblr @LithiumRian hmu.


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